A school headmaster in Nepal had only minutes to act when a flood warning reached his campus on August 26, 2026, and the decisions he made in those moments kept more than 1,600 students alive.
How old is headmaster Rajendra Dawadi?
Rajendra Dawadi, 47, headmaster of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, was on campus when word arrived that a village upstream had been consumed by raging floodwaters surging down the Trishuli Valley.
More than 900 students were already seated in classrooms. Hundreds more were still on their way to school.
Dawadi did not wait for a second warning. He stopped classes, rang the school bell and directed every student and staff member to move immediately to higher ground.
Dawadi flags down driver, tells him to reverse
At the same time, he got on the phone with the drivers of incoming school buses and told them to turn around.
Parents, teachers and students responded quickly, with some children carried away on motorbikes while others ran uphill on foot.
One moment came especially close to catastrophe. As the final school bus approached a nearby bridge, Dawadi personally flagged down the driver and told him to reverse.
How many students survived the floods?
The bus turned around. Approximately 14 minutes after the first warning, the floodwater reached the town and overwhelmed the bridge entirely.
The school building itself, a three-storey structure, was completely destroyed. The land it once occupied is now part of the riverbed.
All 1,643 students survived. However, the disaster claimed two members of the school’s staff: teacher Santos Pariyar and janitor Sultan Lama, both of whom lost their lives in the flood.
Dawadi’s school submerged in river
Dawadi’s willingness to act on an unverified warning, rather than pause for confirmation, is credited with getting the overwhelming majority of those on campus to safety before the water arrived.
The school that once served the community now lies beneath the river.
What remains is the account of a headmaster who, in the middle of an unfolding emergency, rang a bell, made a few phone calls and chose to act.
